Out In The 1960s Be-Bop Working Class Night- The Face Of The Old Irish Working Class Hometown

Another Moment In History- A Guest Post, Of Sorts



Kenny Kelly, Class of 1958?, comment:





A word. I, Kenneth Francis Xavier Kelly, at work they call me Kenny , although my friends call me “FX”, am a map of Ireland, or at least I used to be when I was younger and had a full head of wavy red hair, freckles instead of a whiskey and beer chaser-driven mass of very high proof wrinkles, and my own, rather than store-bought, rattlers, teeth I mean. For work, ya I’m still rolling the barrels uphill, I, well, let’s just say I do a little of this and a little of that. I am also the map of North Quincy, from the Class of 1958 at the old high school, or at least I should have been, except for, well, let’s leave that as at a little of this and that, for now, as well. I’ll tell you that story another time, if you want to hear it.



Let’s also put it that I grew up, rough and tumble, mostly rough, on the hard drinking-father-sometimes-working, and the plumbing-or-something-don’t-work- and-you-can’t- get- the-tight-fisted-landlord-to- fix-anything-for-love-nor- money walk up triple decker just barely working class, mean streets around Sagamore and Prospect Streets in Atlantic. You know, those streets right over by the Welcome Young Field, by Harold’s Variety (you knew Harold’s, with the always active pin-ball machine, and much else), and the Red Feather (excuse me, Sagamore Grille) bar room. Now I have your attention, right?



But first let me explain how I wound up as a “guest” on this “tales of north quincy” blog. Seems like Al, that’s the half-baked, manager of this blog, linked up some story, some weepy cock and bull story, about the Irishness of the old town, “A Moment In History… As March 17th Approaches” to the “North Quincy Graduates Facebook” page and my daughter, Clara, Class of 1978 (and she actually graduated), saw it and recognized the names Radley, O’Brian and Welcome Young Field and asked me to read it. I did and sent Al an e-mail. (Or Clara did, after I told her what to write. I’m not much of hand at this hi-tech stuff, if you want to know the truth)



I don’t know what he did with that e-mail, and to be truthful again, I don’t really care, but in that e-mail I told him something that he didn’t know, or rather two things. The first was that I “knew” him, or rather knew his grandmother Anna Radley because her sister, Bernice, and my grandmother, Mary, also an O’Brien but with an “e”, who both lived in Southie (South Boston, in those days the Irish Mecca, for the heathens or Protestants, or both meaning both Protestant and heathen like old Father Lally at Sacred Heart used to beta his gums about although I used to run with a couple of Protestant toughs who would have my boyos for lunch and have time for a quick hand of gin rummy, that might read this) were as thick as thieves. 


When I was just a teenager myself I used to drive his grandmother over to her sister’s in Southie so that the three of them, and maybe some other ladies joined them for all I know, could go to one of the Broadway bars (don’t ask me to name which one, I don’t remember) that admitted ladies in those days, ladies alone where in some bars they could not do that unless escorted and others which were men's bars, period, and have themselves a drunk. And smoke cigarettes, unfiltered ones no less, Luckies or Chesterfield's if I recall correctly, of which his grandfather, Dan Radley, refused to allow in the house over on Young Street.



I know, I know this is not the way that Irish grandmothers are supposed to act, in public or private. And somebody, if I know my old North Quincy, and my North Quincy Irish, is going say why am I airing that “dirty linen” in public that Al talked about in his story about Frank O’Brian (that I gave the title of above) and what am I doing taking potshots as the blessed memories of those sainted ladies. That is where my second thing comes in to set the record straight – Al, and I told him so in that e-mail (or Clara did) with no beating around the bush, is to me just another one of those misty-eyed, half breed March 17th Irish that are the our curse and who go on and on about the eight hundred years of English tyranny like they lived it, actually lived each day of it.



Now don’t get me wrong. I am as patriotic as the next Irishman in tipping my hat to our Fenian dead, and the boys of ’16, and the lads on the right side in 1922, and the lads fighting in the North now but Al’s got the North Quincy Irish weepy, blessed “old sod” thing all wrong. No doubt about it. So, if you can believe this, he challenged me, to tell the real story. And I am here as his “guest” to straighten him out, and maybe you too. Sure, he is helping me write this thing. I already told you I’m a low-tech guy. Jesus, do you think I could write stuff like that half- baked son of an expletive with his silly, weepy half-Irish arse goings on? I will tell you this though right now if I read this thing and it doesn’t sound right, fists are gonna be swinging, old as I am. But let’s get this thing moving for God’s sake.



Let me tell you about the shabeen, I mean, The Red Feather, that bar room on Sagamore Street. That’s the one I know, and I am just using that as an example. There were plenty of others in old North Quincy, maybe not as many as in Southie, but plenty. If you seriously want to talk about the “Irishness” of North Quincy that is the place, the community cultural institution if you will, to start. Many a boy, including this boy, got his first drink, legal or illegal, at that, or another like it, watering hole. Hell, the “real” reason they built that softball field at Welcome Young was so the guys, players and spectators alike, had an excuse to stop in for a few (well, maybe more than a few) after a tough battle on the base paths. That’s the light-hearted part of the story, in a way. What went on when the “old man”, anybody’s “old man”, got home at the, sometimes, wee hours is not so light-hearted.



See, that is really where the straightening out job on our boy Al needs to be done. Sure, a lot of Irish fathers didn’t get drunk all the time. A lot of Irish fathers didn’t beat on their wives all the time. A lot of Irish fathers didn’t physically beat their kids for no reason. (I never heard of any sexual abuse, but that was a book sealed with seven seals then.) And a lot of Irish wives didn’t just let their husbands beat on them just because they were the meal ticket. And a lot of Irish wives didn’t make excuses for dear old dad (or pray) when the paycheck didn’t show up and the creditors were beating down the door. And a lot of Irish wives didn’t let those Irish fathers beat on their kids. And a lot of Irish mothers didn’t tell their kids not to “air the dirty linen in public.” But, don’t let anyone fool you, and maybe I am touching on things too close to home, my home or yours, but that formed part of the scene, the Irish scene.



And, maybe, because down at the Atlantic end of North Quincy the whole place was so desperately lower working class other ethnic groups, like the Italians, also had those same pathologies. (I am letting Al use that word, although I still don’t really know what it means, but it seemed right when he told me what it meant). Figure it out, plenty of fathers (and it was mainly fathers only in those days who worked, when they could) with not much education and dead-end jobs, plenty of triple decker no space, no air, no privacy rented housing and plenty of dead time. Ya, sure, I felt the “Irishness” of the place sometimes (mainly with the back of the hand), I won’t say I didn’t but when Al starts running on and on about the “old sod” just remember what I told you. I’ll tell you all the truth, won’t you take my word from me.

*****Where Have All The Flowers Gone- With Legendary Folk-Singer Pete Seeger In Mind

 

A while back, a few months ago now I think I mentioned in a sketch about how I came to learn about the music of Woody Guthrie I noted that it was hard to pin just exactly when I first heard his music since it pre-dated my coming to the folk minute of the 1960s where the name Woody Guthrie had been imprinted on lots of work by the then “new breed” protest/social commentary troubadour folk singers like Bob Dylan (who actually spent time in Woody’s hospital room with him when he first came East from Hibbing out of Dinktown in Minneapolis and wrote an early paean called Song To Woody on his first or second album), Ramblin’ Jack Elliott (who made a very nice career out of being a true Woody acolyte and had expected Dylan who had subsequently moved on, moved very far on to more lyrical and electrified  work to do the same), and Stubby Tatum, probably the truest acolyte since he was instrumental in putting a lot of Woody’s unpublished poems and art work out for public inspection and specialized in Woody songs, first around Harvard Square and then wherever he could get a gig, the going was tough which to say the least most of these efforts  were not among the most well know or well thought out of Woody’s works, reflected that long curve decline in the genetically-based illnesses that laid him low by the end.


After some thought, and some prodding by an old-time classmate who had stayed in town and who had been in the class with me, I pinpointed the first time I heard a Woody song to a seventh grade music class, Mr. Dasher’s class whom we innocently then called "Dasher the Flasher" just for rhyming purposes when being a rhyming simon was the cat's meow and was the subject of many strange rhyme schemes, some not publishable even today, but which also with today’s sensibilities in mind about the young would not play very well and would probably have him up before some board of inquiry just because a bunch of moody, alienated hormonally-crazed seventh graders were into a rhyming fad that lasted until the next fad a few weeks or months later, when he in an effort to have us appreciate various genre of the world music songbook made us learn Woody’s This Land Is Your Land.


Little did we know until a few years later when some former student confronted him about why we were made to learn all those silly songs he made us memorize and he told that student that he had done so in order to, fruitlessly as it turned out, break us from our undying devotion to rock and roll, you know, Elvis, Chuck, Jerry Lee, Wanda, Brenda, Bo, Buddy, the Big Bopper and every single doo wop group, male or female we could get our hands on at Chip's Record Shop downtown or on the jukebox at the Dew Drop Diner where we corralled ourselves on many an after school afternoon. If anybody wants to create a board of inquiry over that particular Mister Dasher indiscretion complete with a jury of still irate "rock and roll will never die" aficionados you have my support.   

In thinking about Woody the obvious subsequent question of import is when I first heard the late Pete Seeger sing, a man who acted as the transmission belt between generations, I came up against that same quandary since I know I didn’t associate him with the first time, the first wave of performers, I heard as I connected with the emerging folk minute of the early 1960s. That folk minute start which I do clearly remember the details of got going one Sunday night when tired of the vanilla rock and roll music that was being played in the fall of 1962 on the Boston sell-out rock stations I began flipping the small dial on my transistor radio settling in on this startling gravelly voice which sounded like some old-time mountain man, some old time Jehovah cometh Calvinist avenging angel, singing Come All You Fair And Tender Ladies (who turned out to be folk historian and seminal folk revival figure Dave Von Ronk, who as far as I know later from his politics had no particular religious bent,if any, but who sure sounded like he was heralding the second coming as he walked down from the mountaintop). I listened to a few more songs on what turned out to be a folk music program put on every Sunday evening between seven and nine on WBNC at the request of some college kids in the area who were going crazy for roots music according to the DJ.          

After thinking about it for a while I realized that I had heard Pete not in solo performance but when he was with The Weavers and they made a hit out of the old Lead Belly tune, Good Night, Irene (a song that in the true oral tradition has many versions and depending on the pedigree fewer or more verses, Lead Belly’s being comparatively short but all speaking to a low-down guy trying to get back with his sweetie come hell or high water). In those days, in the early 1950s I think, the Weavers were trying to break into the popular music sphere and were proceeding very well on that path until the Cold War night descended upon them and they, or individual members including Pete were tarred with the red scare "reds under every bed" brush.

Still you cannot keep a good man down, a man with a flame-throwing banjo, with folk music DNA in his blood since he was the son of the well-known folk musicologist Charles Seeger who along with father and son Lomaxes  did so much to record the old time roots music out on location in the hills and hollows of the South, and with something to say to those who were interested in looking back into the roots of American music before it got commercialized (although now much of that early commercial music makes up the key folk anthology put together by Harry Smith and which every self-respecting folkie treated like the bible-and stole like crazy from like Dylan did with Rabbit Allen's James Alley Blues, I think that).


Pete put a lot of it together, a lot of interests. Got the young interested in going back to the time when old cowboys would sing themselves to sleep around the camp fire out in the prairies, when sweat hard-working black share-croppers and plantation workers down South would get out a Saturday night illegal homemade jug and head to the electricity-less juke joint to chase the blues away, and when the people of the hills and hollows down in Appalachia would Saturday night get out the self-same illegal and homemade  jug and run over to Bill Preston’s old seen better days red-painted barn and dance that last dance waltz to that weeping mountain fiddle as the mist rolled in from the damps.

Stuff like that, lots of stuff like that to fill out the American songbook. But Pete also put his pen to paper to write some searing contemporary lyrics just like those “new breed” protest folk singers he helped nurture and probably the most famous to come out of that period, asking a very good question then, a question still be asked now if more desperately than even then, Where Have All The Flowers Gone.  Now a new generation looks like it too is ready to pick up the torch after the long “night of the long knives” we have faced since those days. The music is there to greet them in their new titanic struggles. 

Running The Roads-With Bruce Springsteen’s Racing In The Streets In Mind

Running The Roads-With Bruce Springsteen’s Racing In The Streets In Mind 

 

By Seth Garth

 

Nobody knew exactly how Stu Stewart acquired his knowledge and love of fixing up automobiles, taking basic scrap heaps and making them run to the sun, making them the gods’ own chariots, but he was the “max daddy” king hell king of the 1950s golden age of the automobile night around Fritz Taylor’s old working-class neighborhood, the Acre section of Gloversville. Stu, a few years older than most of the guys who hung around with Fritz at Vinny’s Variety Store over on Millard Street, was strictly a “loner,”  a guy whom Fritz would make the other guys laugh at with his imitation of Stu’s Western  slowpoke cowboy walk, really an amble, with his tight ass jeans, his package of unfiltered Lucky Strike cigarettes complete with matches tucked inside the cellophane, his shit-kicker engineer boots that maybe if Fritz thought about it was the cause of that bramble amble walk, and his whip-chain hanging from his back pocket for all the world, the teenage world, the small shops and offices of downtown world, and the copper world too to see.

Hold up though Fritz only did that imitation when Stu was not around and the coast was clear for Fritz’s freaking skit. Reason: if Stu had ever found out what Fritz was up to, despite the age differences (16 to 22), despite the size and toughness differences, and despite his professed desire to only use that whip-chain for show Stu would have made mincemeat out of Fritz’s silly ass teenage face. The reader does not believe this? Ask Red Riley from over on Sagamore Street, a tough guy who had actually done a stretch at Joven Boys’ Reformatory and learned to be tough or would have wound up being somebody’s honey boy, who said something negative about Stu’s latest honey (girl, okay) and wound up needing twenty-seven stitches quick in the emergency room or he would have died when Stu wailed that whip-chain across his face one night. And Stu, well, Stu just walked away like he had swatted a fly or something. Red took his beating like a man, never said word one to the cops when they came by, a well-thought out tradition in the Acre where the cops were no man’s friends.          

So Fritz knew exactly when and to whom to show his classic imitation. Mostly though everybody, Fritz included, hushed up when Stu came cruising by Vinny’s to start his night’s work. And if the night was a Friday or a Saturday then that night’s work would start by Stu coming by to select a “sidekick” for the evening, a guy who would act as “starter” for the inevitable “chicken run” which would end the night (or really the next morning’s dawn). See Stu in his youth time had been just another guy hanging around Vinny’s, waiting, well, waiting for something but if nothing else than to be old enough to ride a “boss” car around so that he could pick up a “sidekick” at Vinny’s like Hacksaw Jackson did before Stu took over the franchise after Hacksaw had picked him a few times. Stu was only continuing in Hacksaw’s footsteps and so every young guy too young to have wheels of his own, an inability to put a “boss” car together out of a scrap heap or too poor to have a father front for the price of one, Fritz in that latter category, would come to attention waiting for Stu’s nod that signified he would be the sidekick that evening.

(The nod Fritz would realize later was really another side of coming of age, of manhood age in the Acre. Early on guys would greet each other with fulsome hugs as a sign of boy solidarity. Later it would be some short verbal greeting like “What’s up, Jimmy boy.” But as a boy came to manhood his demeanor changed, because almost unconsciously sullen and unresponsive taking a page from Marlon Brando’s or James Dean’s playbook as if words rather than the “nod” were unauthentic by then. This “nod” thing by the way was not all-encompassing, was reserved for guys who you thought were “cool,”  guys who you might not hang with but knew in some capacity enough to make that social distinction. No nod, worse no nod from gods with boss cars like Stu was the kiss of death if you had any aspirations to lead an adventuresome life in the Acre. Strangely when Fritz was in the Army during hellhole Vietnam War time that same nod served that same purpose and it was there that he learned that nod was something of a universal coda among working-class male youth of the day.)      

The only other question on any given night was which one of about six different cars Stu would show up in. Maybe better which parts of the one of those six cars he showed up in would still be intact since he was a born tinkerer, was forever amp-ing up every car. One night Fritz was picked, had received the nod (which unlike in his silly imitation of Stu he took with silent glee as was expected or he would not have made it to the car door before Stu took off) so he knew the full story of what went on in an average Stu night.   

You would never find Stu cruising around aimlessly during the day since as far as anybody knew he held a day job down at the shipyard which was the lifeline of the town’s economy where he was an ace mechanic refitting worn out engines and such. But come dusk around his trailer where he lived, a place he had been brought up in before his mother split with some guy one night and hadn’t been heard from since and he just kind of stayed anyway, you could hear whatever car he had decided to ride that night getting revved up to perdition. Fritz’s night was the night of the two-toned (red and white) ’57 Chevy which even then was a car that young guys were ready to die for, would be the car they wished their fathers would pass on to them but usually wound up being traded in for some new model like a so-so 1960 Chevy or 1961 Dodge something.

Once Fritz opened the door and sat down Stu was off, was off to his first run through around the town and then out a few miles toward the ocean at Adamsville Beach to see what was cooking to see if there were any unattached honeys out there to spice up Stu’s evening. (It could, as rumor had it, have been attached honeys as well since at least once such Jane saw Stu, saw Stu’s car really and abandoned her guy since Stu was whatever his reputation with the women only a fair looking guy, just average so it had to be the car that the girls were dreaming about riding around with Stu in and were willing to give whatever he wanted as part of the price of being seen in the boss car of the town. That was Fritz’s take on the matter both before and after his first sidekick night as the guys around Vinny’s speculated on Stu’s appeal.) On the first pass no action, nada, so they headed to the Dew Drop Drive-In, the gathering spot for youth nation in the area.

There things heated up considerable since the “Dew” was the spot where guys with cars with or without dates, guys and gals without cars went to have a quick snack before the night’s exertions. It was there that Stu spotted Sandy, Sandy McGuire, nothing but a fox, who was a senior at the high school and who every guy around had dreams about even Fritz although he knew she was out of his league. Sandy was sitting on one of the picnic tables Mister Mooney, the owner of the Dew Drop, had put on back of the drive-in in the summer so that the kids would not be blocking the door as respectable people, meaning people there for a dinner and not some car-hop provided tray astride their car, could get inside to folk down their dough for a serious feed. Sandy sitting, as usual at that early time of night, talking to the three or four girls that she had come over to the drive-in restaurant with in somebody’s father’s car.           

Fritz swore the following was true, and to this day he swears that it happened just like that on the occasions when he has gathered in with some old corner boys who hung around Vinny’s and they speak in almost reverend terms about a cowboy grease monkey like Stu. Strangely reverent since they had had mostly successful professional careers or like Fritz been skilled tradesmen, he a small shop owner in the printing trade. Stu stopped his Chevy a few feet from the picnic tables and without saying a thing, remember Fritz swore to this, he simply pointed his finger at Sandy and drew it toward him. A minute later Sandy, also not saying anything, gathered up her sweater brought against any night chill and purse and headed toward Stu and the car. Sandy got into the car through the driver’s side and planted herself in the middle (in those days before seemingly universal bucket seats you could get three across the front seat if necessary), and Fritz took “shot-gun.” It took a few minutes after Stu started the car up for anybody to talk, talk above the radio which was playing some rock and roll song by Chuck Berry as they rode down Lemon Street which told Fritz they were heading back to Adamsville Beach. Then Sandy who looked almost as good up close as she did from a distance with a nice clear face and long brown hair, long slender body and nice legs and who smelled, well, smelled like jasmine or something, asked Stu about how he had put the car together, the “boss” car she said with a certain excitement in her voice.       

Fritz wasn’t sure what to make of what Sandy was talking about since it was one thing for guys even sixteen year old guys like him to go crazy over boss cars it was another for girls to do so. Then Fritz asked Sandy how she knew so much about cars and through that question why she took up Stu’s silent offer to “take a ride.” Sandy laughed and said boys and men for that matter were not the only ones who got excited over cars, and that everybody knew that the number one “max daddy” in town was Stu and that she knew at some point Stu would hone in on her (she didn’t use that word according to Fritz but that was the idea). Oh boy, Fritz thought right then this was going to be like taking candy from a baby for Stu (although he too didn’t use that term but that was the idea). By the time they got Adamsville Beach Sandy was talking excitedly a mile a minute over the radio about the car, school, her home life and what her so-called boyfriend Matt, football Matt would think of her riding with Stu in his souped-up dream Chevy. Yes, this would be like taking candy from a baby as Fritz would find out later when he would have heart to heart talks with girls and they would tell him that they talked a lot when they were getting sexually aroused but were not sure what to do about the situation.

Stu quickly parked the car down the far end of the beach, the Seal Rock end known locally for eons as the lovers’ lane of the area and parents and children should keep away, far away after about dusk, actually probably should stay away in the daytime too just in case some randy couple decided they could not wait until the sun went down, and asked Sandy with a bit of leer if she wanted to go for a walk. She hesitated for a minute then said yes. He didn’t ask Fritz to tag along so Fritz knew the deal was going down, the “do the do,” the local term for having sex learned from a song heard by Howlin’ Wolf on the radio, was in progress. About a half hour Stu with a slight grin on his face and Sandy not looking particularly disheveled like he had seen some girls once they “went for a walk”  down to Seal Rock resurfaced and got in the car. Fritz who had been sitting on the seawall about fifty yards away followed suit.

After depositing Sandy back at the Dew Drop into the hands of her girlfriends about eleven o’clock Stu told Fritz they were now ready for real action, ready to scour the highways that led to Adamsville Beach to see who wanted to take on the max daddy in a “chicken run” and maybe “win” some girl away from the sucker who only was riding with whoever was the king of the hill and have some real fun, ready get down on the “do the do.” Fritz kind of timidly asked Stu whether he and Sandy had done the deed, had had sexual intercourse. Stu laughed and told him that he would learn something about girls like Sandy if he listened to what he said. He had asked Sandy if she wanted to “do the do” over on a secluded area of Seal Rock. She hesitated, said she was not sure, didn’t want that boyfriend Matt, the football player to find out she had been having sexual intercourse with him. Stu, knowing the ways of such “good girls” looking for minute kicks suggested she give him a blow job, you know suck his dick. They walked a little further behind some bushes and Sandy without hesitation pulled down the zipper of his jeans, put her sweater on the ground and got down on her knees and did her work. Good work, very good work Stu said for a “good” girl.

Here was the lesson Stu thought Fritz should learn. He was sure that he would get some action out of Sandy just the way she was talking up a storm in the car probably nervously wondering what she would be expected to do. The problem which Stu was not sure about was that big bull of a football player Matt who might be tougher than him, might see red despite his whip-chain and so he proposed that blow job scenario. And she hopped to it seeing that she would not have to do the other deed. Good girls like Sandy grabbed that opportunity, liked the idea of an off-hand blow job that would not create any sexual danger of pregnancy and would not get around school so they could keep their good reputations. Stu also said that from now on any time he wanted a quick blow job she would be bound to oblige him. Beautiful. But the beautiful thing for Fritz having been part of the scene that night was that Sandy would also have to go down on him if he asked her to avoid any talk around school. (Fritz said would take Stu’s advice a few months later and mention what he wanted and expected from Sandy one night at the Dew Drop and while she was not that happy about it, remember this was Fritz talking, she obliged him in the woods in back of the Dew Drop. A couple of times later as well before she left at the end of summer for college a few states over. Make of that what you will.)                 

Stu said while good girls like Sandy were an easy way to have quick sex and he admitted that she had skills in the oral sex department, sucked his dick completely dry and swallowed the whole load when he erupted, probably grabbed her skills from fending off a million guys who were looking for something more with a few licks to show she was a sport and not some ice queen virgin he was still up for something more from some boss car driver’s slut. So they was looking for some “chicken run” action. (Guys around the Acre were glad to get a blow job just like any other guys but they, and the girls too, didn’t see oral as the same as regular missionary-style intercourse so nobody really bothered to call any girl “easy” or a slut on that basis.)   

Now in those days “boss” car guys didn’t pay attention to some kind of newspaper reports or radio or television broadcasts to find out who was the king of the “chicken run” night like those outlets would be anything but clueless about such subterranean doings but learned who was who out on the backroads late at night. That was why Stu was driving like god’s own angel to see who was also driving those deserted causeway roads at the near end of Adamsville Beach where by day families would throng to cool off from the heat but by the late hour would have totally abandoned the area to the night-takers, to the wild cowboys who had more guts than brains (as Fritz would figure it out later but then he was crazy for the rush of going fast in a “boss” car). Up the road about two miles away from the beach and the entrance to the causeway he found his meat, found what he was looking for a guy in a home-made hot rod that used to be, parts anyway, a 1949 Hudson but which looked that night like a hell-mobile.          

Stu had heard about Lonnie Devine, about that souped-up Hudson and how old Lonnie from Riverdale, several towns away heading west toward the inland towns, had taken down Jimmy Jason a guy whom he had barely beaten the year before when he had a 1953 Dodge souped-up. Had heard too that he had a wild, unpredictable girl riding with him, Laura something. So Stu approached Lonnie’s vehicle and gave him the “nod” (this “nod” an extension of the corner bot nod mentioned before granted to “chicken run” foes known or unknown). That nod signifying that he, Stu wished to run the roads, see what was what. Lonnie answered with his nod and the game was on.    

This “chicken run” is what Fritz or any other sidekick was brought on board by Stu for, to either act as starter or to ride the ride and tell him instantly where the opponent was so he did not have to look right or left. This night Fritz would ride the ride since Laura on the flip of the coin was declared the “starter.” Well, you know there is no story, no story that Fritz would find worthy of telling fifty some years later like some earnest schoolboy if Stu had lost so you know that he won. Blew that Hudson away by a couple of hundred yards. That was not the important part though for him that night. Nor was the fact that Laura, after Lonnie’s defeat at the hands of on Stu Stewart, coolly walked over to Stu’s Chevy and just as coolly sat down in that front seat right next to Stu and began fiddling with the radio dial to get some new rock and roll station in Boston. Nor was the fact that as Stu related to him later he had his way, his “do the do” way with Laura who turned out to be twenty times more skilled at “real” sex than Sandy was at oral sex. No, what was important when the deal went down and Stu had a serious sex partner Fritz was left at the seawall on the nearside of Adamsville Beach find his own way home at two in the morning. Blessed are those who run the roads racing in the streets.                    

An Encore Presentation-In The Time Of The 1960s Folk Minute- With Tom Rush’s No Regrets In Mind 

 

 

I know your leavin's too long over due
For far too long I've had nothing new to show to you
Goodbye dry eyes I watched your plane fade off west of the moon
It felt so strange to walk away alone

No regrets
No tears goodbye
Don't want you back
We'd only cry again
Say goodbye again

The hours that were yours echo like empty rooms
Thoughts we used to share I now keep alone
I woke last night and spoke to you
Not thinkin' you were gone
It felt so strange to lie awake alone

No regrets
No tears goodbye
Don't want you back
We'd only cry again
Say goodbye again

Our friends have tried to turn my nights to day
Strange faces in your place can't keep the ghosts away
Just beyond the darkest hour, just behind the dawn
It feels so strange to lead my life alone

No regrets
No tears goodbye
Don't want you back
We'd only cry again
Say goodbye again

From The Pen Of Zack James 

A few years ago, maybe more like a decade or so, in an earlier 1960s folk minute nostalgia incantation fit Sam Eaton, who will be described further below, had thought he had finally worked out in his head what that folk moment had meant in the great musical arc of his life. Had counted up, had taken up and put value on its graces, did the great subtractions on its disappointments, that lack of beat that he had been spoon fed on in his head having heard maybe in the womb the sweats of some backbeat that sounded an awful lot like a band of the devil’s bad ass angels giving battle to the heavens, and got his head around, his expression, its clasps with certain young women, some absolute folkie women met in the Harvard Squares of the heated horny sex night and loves too not always with folkie women but just the muck of growing up and taking what came his way. So he had taken a back-flip, his expression, when he was required not out of his own volition like that great prairie fire burning before in his youth about why he felt after all these years that he needed to go back to what after all was a very small part of his life now that he was reaching four score and seven, going back over the terrain of a small part of the musics that he had cultivated since early childhood.

Some of those musics from his parents’ slogging through the Great Depression and World War II be-bop swing big band Saturday night get your dancing slippers on imposed on his tender back of brain not to be revived and revisited until many years later when he had heard some ancient Benny Goodman be-bop clarinet backing up a sultry-voiced Peggy Lee getting all in a silky sweat rage because her man like a million others was not a "do right" man but had been chasing her best friend the next best thing when he got his wanting habit on and Peggy turned ice queen when he ran out of dough after shooting craps against the dealer and decided he had been wrong to dismiss such music out of hand. Some of the music along the edges of his coming of  age from that edgy feeling he got when he heard the classic rock that just creeped into his pre-teen brain and lingered there unrequited until he found out what in that beat spoke to his primordial instincts, what caused his feverish nights of wonder, of what made him tick, of what he had missed.

Folk, the folk minute he deeply imbibed for that minute, at least the exciting part of the minute when he heard, finally heard, something that did not make him want to puke every time he turned on the radio, put his ill-gotten coins, grabbed from mother’s pocketbook laying there in wait for his greedy hands or through some con, some cheapjack con he pulled on some younger kids in Jimmy Jakes’ Diner jukebox to impress a few of the girls in town who were not hung up on Fabian or Bobby, heard something very new in his life and so different from the other musics that he had grown up with that he grabbed the sound with both hands. He thought that sweating a decade ago where he done a few small pieces to satisfy his literary sense of things and put them in a desk drawer yellow, frayed and gather dust until he passed on and somebody put the paper in a wastebasket for the rubbish men, thought he had ended those thoughts, closed out the chapter.


Recently though he did another series of short citizen-journalist sketches of scenes from that period for various folk music related blogs and social media outlets. Sam had done that series at the request of his old time friend, Bart Webber, who will also be described in more detail below, from Carver, an old working-class town about thirty miles south of Boston which at the time was the cranberry capital of the world or close to it, and close enough to Boston to have been washed by the folk minute that sprouted forth in Harvard Square and Beacon Hill in Boston.

Sam and Bart, who in their respective youths had been very close, had been corner boys together when that social category meant something, meant something about extreme teen alienation and angst combined with serious poverty, dirt poor poverty as in hand-me-down older brother clothes, as in no family car for long periods between old wreak of cars, of many surly peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, many Spam suppers, all fashioned to make these young men forever talking about big break-outs, about getting something for them and theirs but also for big candy-assed dreams too all put paid to, as one would expect of sons of “boggers,” those who cared for and harvested those world famous  cranberries, but also close because that was the way that corner boys were then, “having each other’s backs” was the term they used which confused even the best of the social scientists who investigated the phenomenon when that corner boy life meant juvenile delinquency, meant some unfathomed anger, some lack of socialization, some throwback to primeval muds, to some rising of the unkempt heathens they were payed to watch out for. Meant as well worry to those in power who were trying to weld society as one piece of steel to fight the internal and external red scare Cold War fight against the faithless, fang-toothed Ruskkie reds wielding nuclear weapons from the hip.

Like a lot of high school friends the cement that bound them in high school, that alienation, that comradery, those best left unsaid larcenous moments, the “midnight creeps” in Bart’s words when somebody asked him later what had made him and the corner boys put their reputations at risk for such small gain, a fact which also played a part in that “having each other’s back” broke apart once they graduated, or rather in their case once they had sowed their wild oats in the 1960s, those wild oats at the time meaning “drugs, sex, and rock and roll” combined with drifting the hitchhike road west in what one of their number, the late Pete Markin, called the search for the great blue-pink American West night.

Sam had stayed out in the West longer than the others except Markin and Josh Breslin whom he and Markin had met on a yellow brick road merry prankster bus before he drifted back East to go to law school and pursue a professional career. Bart had returned earlier, had gotten married to his high school sweetheart and had started up and run a small successful specialty print shop in hometown Carver based on the silk-screening tee-shirt and poster craze. They would run into each other occasionally when Sam came to town but for about twenty years they had not seen each other as both were busy raising families, working and travelling in different circles. One night though when Sam had been sitting in Jimmy Jakes’ Diner over on Spring Street in Carver having a late dinner by himself after having come to town to attend the funeral of a family member Bart had walked in and they then renewed their old relationship, decided that some spark from high school still held them together if nothing else that they both had been deeply formed, still held to those old corner boy habits toward life whatever successes they had subsequently enjoyed.

Along the way to solidifying there new relationship they would alternate meetings, some in Carver, some in Boston or Cambridge where Sam lived. On a recent trip to Boston to meet Sam at the Red Hat at the bottom of Beacon Hill Bart had walked pass Joy Street which triggered memories of the time in high school when he and his date who name he could not remember but she was a cousin of Sam’s “hot” date, Melinda Loring, who they went to school with and whom Sam was crazy to impress even though Melinda was not the daughter of a “bogger” but of school teachers and so from among the town’s better element and he was constantly on eggshells that she would toss him aside once she had figured out he was just another Fast Eddie corner boy trying to get into her pants, had taken them on a cheap date to the Oar and Anchor coffeehouse which stood at the corner of Joy and Cambridge Street to hear Lenny Lane. Lenny was an up and coming folk singer whom Sam had met on one of his clandestine midnight trips to Harvard Square on the Redline subway to hang out at the Hayes-Bickford.

That "cheap" part of the cheap date thing was important since Bart and Sam were as usual from hunger on money in the days when around Carver, probably around the world, guys paid expenses on dates, girls just looked beautiful or if not beautiful glad to not be forever hanging around the midnight telephone waiting for some two-timing guy to call them up for a date, and so short of just hanging at the Hayes for free watching weirdoes, con men, whores plying their trade, drunks, winos and occasional put upon artists, poets, writes and folk-singers perfecting their acts on the cheap, for the price of a couple of cups of coffee, a shared pastry and a couple of bucks in the “basket” for the performer you could get away with a lot especially when Bart was doing Sam a favor with that cousin (and worse could have gotten in trouble if Besty Binstock, his high school sweetheart. found out he was two-timing her although the two-timing involved the possibility of some off-hand sex with that cousin who was supposed to be “easy” but that in another story although come to think of it the situation could serve as another  prime example of “having each other’s back” when one of them was up against it).

Bart remembered that he had been very uncomfortable that night since he had had some feelings of guilt about two-timing (and lying to) Betsy starting out, had had trouble talking about anything in common, school, sports, the weather, with that cousin since she said she was doing Melinda a favor in order that she could go to Boston with Sam which Melinda’s mother would have balked at if she had told her they were going into Boston alone, going into Boston with a “bogger” alone. Moreover she knew nothing, cared nothing for folk music, didn’t even know what it was, said she had never heard of the thing, was fixated on Bobby Vee, dreamy guys, or something like that. What made that date worse was that Bart too then could hardly bear the sound of folk music, said repeatedly that the stuff was all dreary and involved weird stuff like murder and mayhem done on the banks of rivers, in back alleys, on darkened highways just because some woman would not come across, Jesus, strangely thwarted love reminding him of Sam’s forlorn quest for Melinda which seemed like some princess and pauper never the twain shall meet outcome, or hick stuff about home sweet home down in some shanty town in some desolate cabin without lights or water which sounded worse than Boggertown, singing high holy Jehovah stuff that made him wince, and of the hills and hollows in some misbegotten mountains made his teeth grind. So not a good mix, although it did turn out that the cousin was “easy,” did think he was dreamy enough to have sex with (with their clothes mostly on which was how more than one quicky one night stand wound up down by the boathouse near the Charles River after they had split from Sam and Melinda after the coffeehouse closed and that helped but had been the result of no help from the folk music they half-listened to but more some dope that she had in her pocketbook after she had passed a joint around to get things going.            

After telling Sam about his recollections of Joy Street and that cousin, whose name was Judy Dennison Sam told him and who Sam had gone out with and agreed was a little sex kitten once she was stoned, Bart started asking some questions about folk music. Sam said he was not finished with that Judy story, told Bart that fling was after the thing with Melinda had passed due not to class distinctions but to that hard fact that she was saving “it” for marriage, and had been very glad that he had that run around with Judy and was not sorry he did. Bart started in again and asked Sam a million questions about various folk-singers and what had happened to them, were they still playing, still alive since Sam although he did not have the same keen interest of his youthful folk minute still kept small tabs on the scene, the now small scene through his long-time companion, Laura Perkins whom he met one night at the Café Nana several years before when Tom Tremble was playing there after Sam had not heard him in about forty years.


The reason for Bart’s interest given that above he had said that the genre made his teeth grind was that after that night with Judy Bart did go on other double dates with Sam and Melinda, and later Suzanne when she was Sam’s next flame and a real folkie, to folk places and while he still would grind his teeth at some of the stuff he did develop more tolerance for the genre, especially if the date Sam set up was a real foxy folkie girl (thinking on it now he couldn’t believe how unfaithful he had been to Betsy in those days but she too was saving “it” for marriage and some of those young women were very willing and had apartment or dorm rooms too).

The upshot of all of Bart’s questions was that Sam found that he was not really except for Tom Tremble who had lost his sweet baby James voice, forgot lyrics and had “mailed it in” that night he had met Laura and was cold “stonewalled” by the audience but possibly motivated by that old folkie feeling, or maybe just feeling sorry for a guy who had a big local following back in the day when the “basket” went around everybody put some dough in, Sam and Laura included, and a couple of other guys up on what had happened to the old-time folkies since for years he had merely listened on radio station WCAS and when that station went under WUMB out of U/Mass-Boston or listened to records, tapes or CDs. (Sam got big points from Laura that first night when he panned Tom, who Laura had never heard before being enough younger not to have been bitten by the folk minute craze and she agreed that Tom had “mailed it in”.) Since Sam was not all that familiar with what had happened to most of them he thereafter did some research, asked Laura some questions to lead the way and wound up writings that series of sketches. One series entitled Not Bob Dylan about the fate of prominent male folk-singers was a direct result of the Sam and Bart conversation. Here’s what he had to say about Tom Rush who back in the day he knew best from hanging around the old Club 47 on Mount Auburn Street:     

“…Other than enigmatic Bob Dylan who is the iconic never-ending tour male performer most people would still associate with that folk minute period they would draw a blank on a list of others who also were aspiring to make names for themselves in the folk milieu. I am not talking about guys like Lenny Lane who had one hit and then went back to graduate school in biology when he couldn’t get another contract, when his well ran dry, or like Tom Tremble who had a big local following around the old Club Nana when it was on Mount Auburn Street in Cambridge not where it is now on Brattle Street but who did mainly covers and just never broke out or Mike Weddle who had good looks, a good stage presence, had the young women going crazy but who just walked away one day when some good looking woman from Radcliffe came hither and he “sold out” to her father’s stockbroking business.

I’m talking about people like Tom Rush from New Hampshire who lit up the firmament around Cambridge via the Harvard campus folk music station, Dave Von Ronk the cantankerous folk historian and musician who knew more about what happened in the early, early days in the Village at the point where “beat” poetry was becoming passe and folk was moving in to fill in the gap, Phil Ochs who had probably the deepest political sensibilities of the lot and wrote some of the stronger narrative folk protest songs, Richard Farina who represented that “live fast” edge that we were bequeathed by the “beats” and who tumbled down the hill on a motorcycle, and Jesse Collin Young who probably wrote along with Eric Andersen and Jesse Winchester the most pre-flower child lyrics mid-1960s hippie explosion before folk got amplified of the bunch.

My friend Bart had just seen a fragile seeming, froggy-voiced Bob Dylan in one of stages of his apparently never-ending concerts tours up in Maine and had been shaken by the sight and had wondered about the fate of other such folk performers. That request turned into a series of reviews of male folk-singers entitled Not Bob Dylan (and after that, also at Bart’s request, a series entitled Not Joan Baez based on some of the same premises except on the distaff side (nice word, right, you know golden-voiced Judy Collins and her sweet songs of lost, Carolyn Hester and her elegant rendition of Walt Whitman’s Oh Captain, My Captain, Joan’s sister Mimi Farina forever linked with Richard and sorrows, and Malvina Reynolds who could write a song on the wing, fast okay, and based as well on the mass media having back then declared that pair the “king and queen” of the burgeoning folk music minute scene).

That first series (as had the second) had asked two central questions-why did those male folk singers not challenge Dylan who as I noted the media of the day had crowned king of the folk minute for supremacy in the smoky coffeehouse night (then, now the few remaining are mercifully smoke-free although then I smoked as heavily as any guy who though such behavior was, ah, manly and a way to seen “cool” to the young women, why else would we have done such a crazy to the health thing if not to impress some certain she)  and, if they had not passed on and unfortunately a number have a few more since that series as well most notably Phil Ochs of suicide early, Dave Von Ronk of hubris and Jesse Winchester of his battle lost over time had come, were they still working the smoke-free church basement, homemade cookies and coffee circuit that constitutes the remnant of that folk minute even in the old hotbeds like Cambridge and Boston. (What I call the U/U circuit since while other church venues are part of the mix you can usually bet safely that if an event is scheduled it will be at a U/U church which is worthy of a little sketch of its own sometime in order to trace the folk minute after the fanfare had died down and as a tribute to those big-hearted souls at radio stations like WCAS and WUMB and in places like Club Passim whose efforts have kept the thing going in order to try to pass it on to the younger generations now that demographics are catching up with the folkies from the 1960s heyday). Moreover, were they still singing and song-writing, that pairing of singer and writer having been becoming more prevalent, especially in the folk milieu in the wake of Bob Dylan’s word explosions back then. The days when the ground was shifting under the Tin Pan Alley Cole Porter/Irving Berlin/ Jerome Kern kingdom.   

Here is the general format I used in that series for asking and answering those two questions which still apply today if one is hell-bent on figuring out the characters who rose and fell during that time: 

“If I were to ask someone, in the year 2005 as I have done periodically both before and after, to name a male folk singer from the 1960s I would assume that if I were to get any answer to that question that the name would be Bob Dylan. That “getting any answer” prompted by the increasing non-recognition of the folk genre by anybody under say forty, except those few kids who somehow “found” their parents’ stash of Vanguard records (for example, there were other folk labels including, importantly, Columbia Records which pushed the likes of Dylan and John Hammond forward) just as some in an earlier Pete Seeger/Weavers/Leadbelly/ Josh White/Woody Guthrie records in our parents’ stashes. Today’s kids mainly influenced by hip-hop, techno-music and just straight popular music.

And that Dylan pick would be a good and appropriate choice. One can endlessly dispute whether or not Dylan was (or wanted to be since he clearly had tired of the role, or seemed to by about 1966 when he for all intents and purposes “retired” for a while prompted by a serious motorcycle accident and other incidents) the voice of the Generation of ’68 (so named for the fateful events of that watershed year, especially the Democratic Convention in America in the summer of that year when the old-guard pulled the hammer down and in Paris where the smell of revolution was palpably in the air for the first time since about World War II, when those, including me, who tried to “turn the world upside down” to make it more livable began to feel that the movement was reaching some ebb tide) but in terms of longevity and productivity, the never-ending touring until this day and releasing of X amount of bootleg recordings, the copyrighting of every variation of every song, including traditional songs, he ever covered and the squelching of the part of the work that he has control over on YouTube he fits the bill as a known quality. However, there were a slew of other male folk singers who tried to find their niche in the folk milieu and who, like Dylan, today continue to produce work and to perform. The artist under review, Tom Rush, is one such singer/songwriter.”

“The following is a question that I have been posing in reviewing the work of a number of male folk singers from the 1960s and it is certainly an appropriate question to ask of Tom Rush as well. Did they aspire to be the “king” of the genre? I do not know if Tom Rush, like his contemporary Bob Dylan, started out wanting to be the king of the hill among male folk singers but he certainly had some things going for him. A decent acoustic guitar but a very interesting (and strong baritone) voice to fit the lyrics of love, hope, and longing that he was singing about at the time, particularly the No Regrets/Rockport Sunday combination which along with Wasn’t That A Mighty Storm and Joshua Gone Barbados were staples early on. During much of this period along with his own songs he was covering other artists, particularly Joni Mitchell and her Urge For Going and The Circle Game, so it is not clear to me that he had that same Dylan drive by let’s say 1968.

I just mentioned that he covered Joni Mitchell in this period. A very nice version of Urge For Going that captures the wintry, got to get out of here, imaginary that Joni was trying to evoke about things back in her Canadian homeland. And the timelessness and great lyrical sense of his No Regrets, as the Generation of ’68 sees another generational cycle starting, as is apparent now if it was not then. The covers of fellow Cambridge folk scene fixture Eric Von Schmidt on Joshua Gone Barbados and Galveston Flood are well done. As is the cover of Bukka White’s Panama Limited (although you really have to see or hear old Bukka flailing away on his old beat up National guitar to get the real thing on YouTube).”

Whether Tom Rush had the fire back then is a mute question now although in watching the documentary, No Regrets, in which he tells us about his life from childhood to the very recent past (2014) at some point he did lose the flaming “burn down the building fire,” just got tired of the road like many, many other performers and became a top-notch record producer, a “gentleman farmer,” and returned to the stage occasionally, most dramatically with his annual show Tom Rush-The Club 47 Tradition Continues held at Symphony Hall in Boston each winter. And in this documentary appropriately done under the sign of “no regrets” which tells Tom’s take on much that happened then he takes a turn, an important oral tradition turn, as folk historian. 

He takes us, even those of us who were in the whirl of some of it back then to those key moments when we were looking for something rooted, something that would make us pop in the red scare Cold War night of the early 1960s. Needless to say the legendary Club 47 in Cambridge gets plenty of attention as does his own fitful start in getting his material recorded, or rather fitful starts, mainly walking around to every possible venue in town to get backing for record production the key to getting heard by a wider audience via the radio and to become part of the increasing number of folk music-oriented programs, the continuing struggle to this day from what he had to say once you are not a gold-studded fixture.

“Other coffeehouses and other performers of the time, especially Eric Von Schmidt, another performer with a ton of talent and song-writing ability who had been on the scene very, very early on who eventually decided that his artistic career took first place, get a nod of recognition.  As does the role of key radio folk DJ Dick Summer in show-casing new work (and the folk show, picked up accidently one Sunday night when I was frustrated with the so-called rock and roll on the local AM rock station and flipped the dial of my transistor radio and heard a different sound, the sound of Dave Von Ronk, where I started to pick up my life-long folk “habit”).

So if you want to remember those days when you sought refuse in the coffeehouses and church basements, sought a “cheap” date night (for the price of a couple of cups of coffee sipped slowly in front of you and your date, a shared pastry and maybe a few bucks admission or tossed into the passed-around “basket” you got away easy and if she liked the sound too, who knows what else) or, ouch, want to know why your parents are still playing Joshua’s Gone Barbados on the record player as you go out the door Saturday night to your own adventures watch this documentary and find out what happened to one Not Bob Dylan when the folk world went under.   

 

 

 

Once Again, When Be-Bop Bopped In The Doo Wop Night- “Street Corner Serenade II”- A CD Review

A YouTube film clip of the Harptones performing Life Is But A Dream.



CD Review

The Rock ‘n’ Roll, Era: Street Corner Serenade, Volume II, Time-Life Music, 1992


Sure I have plenty to say, as I mentioned in a review of Volume One of this two volume Street Corner Serenade set, about early rock ‘n’ roll, now called the classic rock period in the musicology hall of fame. And within that say I have spent a little time, not enough, considering its deep effect on us on the doo-wop branch of the genre. Part of the reason, obviously, is that back in those mid-1950s jail-breakout days I did not (and I do not believe that any other eleven and twelve year olds did either), distinguish between let’s say rockabilly-back-beat drive rock, black-based rock centered on a heavy rhythm and blues backdrop, and the almost instrument-less (or maybe a soft piano or guitar backdrop) group harmonics that drove doo-wop. All I knew was that it was not my parents’ music, not even close, and that they got nervous, very nervous, anytime it was played out loud in their presence. Fortunately, some sainted, sanctified, techno-guru developed the iPod of that primitive era, the battery-driven transistor radio. No big deal, technology-wise by today’s standards, but get this, you could place it near your ear and have your own private out loud without parental scuffling in the background. Yes, sainted, sanctified techno-guru. No question.



What doo-wop did though down in our old-time working class neighborhood, and again it was not so much by revelation as by trial and error is allow us to be in tune with the music of our generation without having to spend a lot of money on instruments or a studio or any such. Where the hell would we have gotten the dough for such things as musical instruments of our own (in school we could have borrowed such things-in school-to play what-John Phillip Sousa maybe-no thank you, when papas were out of work, or were one step away from that dreaded unemployment line, and there was trouble just keeping the wolves from the door? Sure, some kids, some kids like my “home boy” (no, not a term we used at the time although corner boy had some currency as did "boyo" from Irish grandfathers still only a generation or two off the boat) elementary school boyhood friend Billie, William James Bradley, were crazy to put together cover bands with electric guitars (rented occasionally), and dreams. Or maybe go wild with a school piano a la Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, or Fats Domino but those were maniac aficionados. Even Billie though, when the deal went down, especially after hearing Frankie Lymon and The Teenagers on Why Do Fools Fall In Love was mad to do the doo-wop and make his fame and fortune.



The cover art on this compilation shows a group of young black kids, black guys, who look like they are doing their doo wop on some big city street corner. And that makes sense reflecting the New York City-derived birth of doo-wop and that the majority of doo-wop groups that we heard on AM radio were black. But the city, the poor sections of the city, white or black, was not the only place where moneyless guys and gals were harmonizing, hoping, hoping maybe beyond hope to be discovered and make more than just a 1950s musical jail-breakout. Moreover, this cover art also shows, and shows vividly, what a lot of us guys were trying to do-impress girls (and maybe visa-versa for girl doo-woppers but they can tell their own stories).



Yes, truth to tell, it was about impressing girls that drove many of us, Billie included, christ maybe Billie most of all, to mix and match harmonies. And you know you did too (except girls just switch around what I just said). Ya, four or five guys just hanging around the back door of the elementary school on hot summer nights, nothing better to do, no dough to do it, maybe a little feisty because of that, and start up a few tunes. Billie, who actually did have some vocal musical talent, usually sang lead, and the rest of us, well, doo-wopped. What do you think we would do? We knew nothing of keys and pauses, of time, pitch, or reading music we just improvised. (And I kept my changing to teen-ager, slightly off-key, voice on the low.) 


 Whether we did it well or poorly, guess what, as the hot day turned into humid night, and the old sun went down just over the hills, first a couple of girls, then a couple more, and then a whole bevy (nice word, right?) of them came and got kind of swoony and moony. And swoony and moony was just fine. And we all innocent, innocent dream, innocent when we dreamed, make our virginal moves. But, mainly, we doo-wopped in the be-bop mid-1950s night. And a few of the songs in this doo-wop compilation could be heard in that airless night.



The stick outs here on Volume Two which is not quite as good as the first volume overall reflecting, I think, that like in other genres, there were really only so many doo-wop songs that have withstood the test of time: Life Is But A Dream (which with my voice really changing I kept very, very low on), The Harptones; Gloria ( a little louder from me on this one), The Cadillacs; Six Nights A Week (not their best 16 Candles is), The Crests: and, A Kiss From Your Lips, The Flamingos.

War and Peace-Russian Style-The Film Adaptation Of Leo Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” (1956)

DVD Review 

By Sam Lowell

 

War and Peace, starring Henry Fonda, Audrey Hepburn, Mel Ferrer and a cast of thousands, directed by the legendary King Vidor, adapted from the novel of the same name by Leo Tolstoy, 1956 

On major works of world literature what should a thoughtful person do first-read that classic work, even if as in the case of the film adaptation under review of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace the novel runs to a thousand closely-spaced pages, or the film adaptation where, as here, it is available in some version. Well, I think naturally that one should read the book first, or as here, slug through the book but maybe I am old-fashioned about books in the digital age and younger reviewer would reverse the order. Each way this is a must read or see.

Of course most people know that Tolstoy’s master work was his take on the battles royal between Napoleon and his French Revolution-derived armed forces and new ideas and old serf-ridden Mother Russia, his homeland back in the early 19^th century when the figure of Napoleon struck fear or delight in most of Europe. Tolstoy’s take here is that good the old despotic Czarist order needed defending against the invaders from the West whatever his later more pacifistic notions might be. History is a funny mistress and so it very much depends on which side of the political spectrum you are on how you see the figure of Napoleon and of the after effects on the French Revolution on the historical process. Most leftists, including later Russian leftists, sensed a liberating mission, maybe distorted, but liberating nevertheless by Napoleon’s push to Russia (which as with the French Revolution would presumably free the endlessly soiling peasants). Obviously the novel takes a different tact and certainly the film paints Napoleon as nothing but a low-rent invader of sweet Mother Russia stirring the blood of every Russian patriot even those few who had sympathy for the French Revolution.

Well that is the historic slant part because what this film is about beyond the various umpteen battles with Napoleon is an old-fashioned coming of age romance, and about thwarted romance if you think about it. Here against that military campaign backdrop one Countess Rostov, played by angelic Audrey Hepburn in her ingénue days, Prince Andre, a Russian military officer as well as noble played by Mel Ferrer and Pierre, a civilian intellectual and inheritor of a landed estate, played by Henry Fonda go through a long process of both longing for love and being thwarted in that quest by the various turns of military fortune and personal obstacles.    

In the end, as at the beginning, it will be whoever is left standing, and the Countess and Pierre will finally be the two after more trials and tribulations than you could shake a stick at including Pierre’s marriage to an unfaithful wife, the Countess’ infatuation with ne’er-do-well Army officer, her devotion to the widowed Prince Andre before he passed away from his mortal wounds, and Pierre’s captivity as a prisoner of the French Army love will out, love as life will out. Oh yeah, and those monumental battles with a cast of thousands which take up the rest of the film act as filler for this epic. By the way if you are going to watch this one end to end better have plenty of popcorn at hand since it is over three and one-half hours long. And by all means take a few weeks and read the literary classic to get the other story lines of the minor characters who are left out of the film.